Not my point:P The instant I hit "submit", though, I knew someone would comment on my choice of "mp3" for the sound format, but it was too late to change it to something non-specific.
While I've built a dozen desktops for other people, I've been using laptops for myself (though I'll finally be building myself a desktop next month). I've always wanted to build my own laptop, assuming it's financially viable and logistically doable...
Can anyone provide any resources (websites, articles, etc etc) for building your own laptop, instead of saying it's "easily assembled by anyone who knows anything about the inside of a notebook"? I'm quite familiar with the insides of notebooks, having disassembled a few, but that doesn't help me figure out where to buy retail parts...
I seem to remember a recent article in which it was shown that major news sources had been caught using an unsourced, fake quote from a Wikipedia article. So no, it's not unreasonable to use Wikipedia as an example of a sometimes unreliable internet source.
All the guy wants is to buy additional hardware for his machine. Why should he need a warranty number for that? Should car part stores ask for your VIN number when you want to buy a new headlight?
Perhaps a better analogy is laptop batteries. Why should Dell care how I got my laptop, if all I want is to spend money buying a new battery? They certainly don't lose anything - on the contrary, refusing service to me is what's losing them money!
Actually my insurance costs went up significantly when I got married, partially because my wife had car accidents on her record still, and partially because insuring two people costs more than insuring one person.
I'm going to have to agree with my sibling post; you need to get a more fuel-efficient, smaller vehicle. At $100/fillup, if we assume you pay $3/gallon (which is above the average price here in Seattle), you've got a 33 gallon fuel tank in your vehicle. The Penske moving truck I rented last week had a smaller tank than that - what do you drive, a semi?
I'm 23, which is an age at which insurance companies charge you higher rates simply because they don't consider you a "responsible" adult yet. I pay about $500 for a six-month period to insure both me and my wife on our Honda Civic... that's less than $100/month.
You can have your choice of new vehicles and pay less than $200/month on the loan. Why on earth were you paying $650/month?
It's really looking like you made a stupid decision buying that particular vehicle.
I'd bet that a lot of people wouldn't know the hard drive is missing.
Victim: "My computer won't start. I turn it on and the screen is black and it says 'No boot disk found.' Can you fix it?" (The average layperson doesn't know what that error message means, remember.)
Crook: "Sure, but it will take me about a week. I'll throw in a discount for you, too - just $50/hr instead of $100/hr."
I think there's a reason I didn't go into the sciences... I do better with make-believe science (Star Trek or fantasy magic systems) than with anything else.
But from the point of view of the stationary center of the big bang, each particle would be 1 light-year away from the center, so from the point of view of the stationary center, the distance from particle A to particle B would be (nearly?) 2 light-years, correct?
Two photons are emitted from a stationary point in opposite directions. What is the speed of photon A relative to photon B? I had assumed the answer would be 2*c, but if I understand you correctly you're telling me it's no more than c. This doesn't make sense to me...
I realize this may be an elementary question to some of you, but I'm not a physics nerd;P
A trickier part of it is forming the bubble in the first place, and even more difficult, 'popping' the bubble once you've arrived at your destination - see the Wikipedia article on the Alcubierre Drive, which would behave more or less the same way the article describes.
The theory is that, at the time of the big bang, space was expanding faster than light, so that one year after the big bang particles would be more than 1 light-year apart from each other.
Just a nitpick... you mean "more than 2 light-years apart from each other". Think of a circle with a radius of 1 light-year...
Maybe it's crappy, I don't know... I'm not a battery guru. However, I may have underestimated the battery life; I don't really devote brain cells to remembering how often I recharge it, I just plop it on the charger when the light starts blinking red. I remember that it's "not very often", which my brain translated to "two weeks [or so]" when I needed to write it down... this would be so much easier if the internet were telepathic:D
For those interested, the mouse uses a single AA Nickel Metal Hydride rechargable battery which claims to have 2100 mAh. I don't know how much power the mouse draws; it's a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 if you really want to look it up.
Bad form to reply to myself, but I thought I'd add that using a standard USB wheel mouse with the same kernel results in a working wheel. It must be the bluetooth chipset not passing on events other than right and left click.
I tried the ZAxisMapping setting once, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It didn't work. I haven't tried recently, but since I'm about to give this laptop to my wife once I buy my new desktop, I'm not particularly motivated to fiddle around with it anymore;)
Try debugging code that modifies the stack pointer and get back to me. (For the curious, we implemented a simple kernel entirely in userspace; it supported multitasking via timers and setjmp/longjmp. I never did get gdb to work with it at all. Print statements were all I had, most of the time.)
I'm guessing bad drivers. My Microsoft bluetooth mouse works very, very well; I only see it lag briefly when I've let it go inactive for 5+ minutes.
Incidentally, I don't have bluetooth enabled in my Linux kernel (2.6.27), but my mouse works. That is, movement and the right and left buttons work, but the wheel and the third, fourth, and fifth buttons don't, so it's not full functionality, but I find it odd that the mouse works at all without bluetooth support in the kernel. Can anyone help me understand why? Is my bluetooth hardware emulating something?
Same experience here. I've never used a standard wireless mouse, but my bluetooth mouse works quite well, and the battery (a single rechargeable AA) regularly lasts two weeks through lengthy gaming sessions. The mouse came with a USB bluetooth dongle which I've used once or twice on desktops, but I normally use the bluetooth receiver built in to my laptop.
That's why I'm not bothering to get a landline when I move to my new apartment this weekend. I see no reason to pay $25/month to save $10/month on a service bundle from Comcast, especially when I'm already paying quite a bit more than that for cell phone service.
If Comcast weren't practically giving me a year of Cable TV for free, I wouldn't even get that from them (I'd get DirecTV instead, which is significantly cheaper with more channels).
Had the villagers gotten together and negotiated with the telco directly, then there probably wouldn't have been an issue, saved some money, and one hell of a headache.
I think you missed the last article about this situation - the city did ask the telcos to provide service (after providing marketing demographics), and the telcos said no. They then took the next logical step - they set up their own ISP to serve their needs. I don't see what else they could have done.
As a counter-example, my dad's office building is in the middle of Midvale, Utah, which is effectively part of Salt Lake City. He wanted to get Comcast internet service for his office building. They wouldn't provide it, because they would have had to run a cable across the street (literally). He offered to pay for it himself, and they still said no.
Instead, they wanted him to get some percentage of the tenants of that business park to sign up for Comcast - they wanted him to do their marketing for them! As a busy accountant, my dad hardly has time to do that kind of thing.
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Not my point :P The instant I hit "submit", though, I knew someone would comment on my choice of "mp3" for the sound format, but it was too late to change it to something non-specific.
While I've built a dozen desktops for other people, I've been using laptops for myself (though I'll finally be building myself a desktop next month). I've always wanted to build my own laptop, assuming it's financially viable and logistically doable...
Can anyone provide any resources (websites, articles, etc etc) for building your own laptop, instead of saying it's "easily assembled by anyone who knows anything about the inside of a notebook"? I'm quite familiar with the insides of notebooks, having disassembled a few, but that doesn't help me figure out where to buy retail parts...
I seem to remember a recent article in which it was shown that major news sources had been caught using an unsourced, fake quote from a Wikipedia article. So no, it's not unreasonable to use Wikipedia as an example of a sometimes unreliable internet source.
I hope you're being serious, and I hope you let us know how it turns out. Perhaps you'll post an mp3 for us to listen to?
All the guy wants is to buy additional hardware for his machine. Why should he need a warranty number for that? Should car part stores ask for your VIN number when you want to buy a new headlight?
Perhaps a better analogy is laptop batteries. Why should Dell care how I got my laptop, if all I want is to spend money buying a new battery? They certainly don't lose anything - on the contrary, refusing service to me is what's losing them money!
Actually my insurance costs went up significantly when I got married, partially because my wife had car accidents on her record still, and partially because insuring two people costs more than insuring one person.
I'm going to have to agree with my sibling post; you need to get a more fuel-efficient, smaller vehicle. At $100/fillup, if we assume you pay $3/gallon (which is above the average price here in Seattle), you've got a 33 gallon fuel tank in your vehicle. The Penske moving truck I rented last week had a smaller tank than that - what do you drive, a semi?
I'm 23, which is an age at which insurance companies charge you higher rates simply because they don't consider you a "responsible" adult yet. I pay about $500 for a six-month period to insure both me and my wife on our Honda Civic... that's less than $100/month.
You can have your choice of new vehicles and pay less than $200/month on the loan. Why on earth were you paying $650/month?
It's really looking like you made a stupid decision buying that particular vehicle.
I'd bet that a lot of people wouldn't know the hard drive is missing.
Victim: "My computer won't start. I turn it on and the screen is black and it says 'No boot disk found.' Can you fix it?" (The average layperson doesn't know what that error message means, remember.)
Crook: "Sure, but it will take me about a week. I'll throw in a discount for you, too - just $50/hr instead of $100/hr."
Michael Scott would probably fall for that one.
I see (sort of). Thanks :)
I think there's a reason I didn't go into the sciences... I do better with make-believe science (Star Trek or fantasy magic systems) than with anything else.
But from the point of view of the stationary center of the big bang, each particle would be 1 light-year away from the center, so from the point of view of the stationary center, the distance from particle A to particle B would be (nearly?) 2 light-years, correct?
Two photons are emitted from a stationary point in opposite directions. What is the speed of photon A relative to photon B? I had assumed the answer would be 2*c, but if I understand you correctly you're telling me it's no more than c. This doesn't make sense to me...
I realize this may be an elementary question to some of you, but I'm not a physics nerd ;P
A trickier part of it is forming the bubble in the first place, and even more difficult, 'popping' the bubble once you've arrived at your destination - see the Wikipedia article on the Alcubierre Drive, which would behave more or less the same way the article describes.
The theory is that, at the time of the big bang, space was expanding faster than light, so that one year after the big bang particles would be more than 1 light-year apart from each other.
Just a nitpick... you mean "more than 2 light-years apart from each other". Think of a circle with a radius of 1 light-year...
I used to use a hand-me-down HP laptop (that had a broken screen) as a desktop using an external monitor. It's just like having a desktop, really.
Maybe it's crappy, I don't know... I'm not a battery guru. However, I may have underestimated the battery life; I don't really devote brain cells to remembering how often I recharge it, I just plop it on the charger when the light starts blinking red. I remember that it's "not very often", which my brain translated to "two weeks [or so]" when I needed to write it down... this would be so much easier if the internet were telepathic :D
For those interested, the mouse uses a single AA Nickel Metal Hydride rechargable battery which claims to have 2100 mAh. I don't know how much power the mouse draws; it's a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 if you really want to look it up.
Bad form to reply to myself, but I thought I'd add that using a standard USB wheel mouse with the same kernel results in a working wheel. It must be the bluetooth chipset not passing on events other than right and left click.
I tried the ZAxisMapping setting once, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It didn't work. I haven't tried recently, but since I'm about to give this laptop to my wife once I buy my new desktop, I'm not particularly motivated to fiddle around with it anymore ;)
I compiled my own kernel. I'm quite certain I don't have bluetooth anything, userspace or otherwise.
Makes sense, thanks. I did have to make sure the mouse is paired in Windows once before it would work in Linux.
Try debugging code that modifies the stack pointer and get back to me. (For the curious, we implemented a simple kernel entirely in userspace; it supported multitasking via timers and setjmp/longjmp. I never did get gdb to work with it at all. Print statements were all I had, most of the time.)
I'm guessing bad drivers. My Microsoft bluetooth mouse works very, very well; I only see it lag briefly when I've let it go inactive for 5+ minutes.
Incidentally, I don't have bluetooth enabled in my Linux kernel (2.6.27), but my mouse works. That is, movement and the right and left buttons work, but the wheel and the third, fourth, and fifth buttons don't, so it's not full functionality, but I find it odd that the mouse works at all without bluetooth support in the kernel. Can anyone help me understand why? Is my bluetooth hardware emulating something?
Same experience here. I've never used a standard wireless mouse, but my bluetooth mouse works quite well, and the battery (a single rechargeable AA) regularly lasts two weeks through lengthy gaming sessions. The mouse came with a USB bluetooth dongle which I've used once or twice on desktops, but I normally use the bluetooth receiver built in to my laptop.
That's why I'm not bothering to get a landline when I move to my new apartment this weekend. I see no reason to pay $25/month to save $10/month on a service bundle from Comcast, especially when I'm already paying quite a bit more than that for cell phone service.
If Comcast weren't practically giving me a year of Cable TV for free, I wouldn't even get that from them (I'd get DirecTV instead, which is significantly cheaper with more channels).
I only wish I had an alternative ISP.
Had the villagers gotten together and negotiated with the telco directly, then there probably wouldn't have been an issue, saved some money, and one hell of a headache.
I think you missed the last article about this situation - the city did ask the telcos to provide service (after providing marketing demographics), and the telcos said no. They then took the next logical step - they set up their own ISP to serve their needs. I don't see what else they could have done.
As a counter-example, my dad's office building is in the middle of Midvale, Utah, which is effectively part of Salt Lake City. He wanted to get Comcast internet service for his office building. They wouldn't provide it, because they would have had to run a cable across the street (literally). He offered to pay for it himself, and they still said no.
Instead, they wanted him to get some percentage of the tenants of that business park to sign up for Comcast - they wanted him to do their marketing for them! As a busy accountant, my dad hardly has time to do that kind of thing.
He ended up getting Qwest DSL instead.